Outline for the Third Term Paper

Avalanches in Film

A. INTRODUCTION- rough

            When one thinks of special effects in film, they often think of fire, ice, snow water and explosions. Rarely do they get any more specific as to think of avalanches. It is true that there are only a handful of examples of avalanches in film, and even less successful attempts at it. Both Ice Age and On Her Majesty's Secret Service contain avalanches of some sort and both of them could use some reworking. However, what they did achieve was a sense of believability in their avalanche attempts. Through animating on different layers to superimposing man made avalanches, these two films showcase how avalanches can be produced in film, but also how much farther the film industry has to go to produce better ones.

B: BODY- polished

I. Ice Age

            In the beginning of "Ice Age", Scrat accidentally sets off an avalanche. The animators on Ice Age separated each individual piece of glacier shard to move on its own in their animation program, then put them all together into one gigantic monster of an avalanche. To do this, the animators put the glaciers on separate layers of animation and the huge glacier moving towards Scrat on its own layer. They also stressed how they were not trying to create a realistic avalanche, but rather a cartoon version of it to suit the scene, which is why there are glacier shards "chasing" after Scrat.

            The way the shards move is not really realistic as it seems to have a life of its own but it fits in the world that has been created in "Ice Age". Studying actual avalanches and glacier attacks are important for the animators, which was probably neglected a bit due to their idea of wanting to heighten the comedy of the scene. What results is a believable effects animation in that world, but viewed today, the shards move too uniformly and could use a bit more sporadic changes in the pace and shard's paths of action. In other words, more randomness could create a greater sense of the naturalistic monster that an avalanche can be in real life.

II. On Her Majesty's Secret Service

            The massively uneven 007 "On Her Majesty's Secret Service" contains an avalanche scene that was created from a man-made avalanche, stock footage, special effects and edits. Cliff Culley, Robert Browne and Roy Field shot their man-made avalanche in Pinewood Studios in London using some fake trees and salt as snow. After they had completed their simulation, Culley and his crew used optical effects to superimpose the salt and trees onto the footage where 007 and his soon-to-be-bride Tracy were skiing. This gave the effect that the snow was closing in and would soon be devouring the two lovebirds. Due to Director Peter Hunt's excessive love for quick cuts, stock footage of avalanches were also implemented to "heighten" the drama and tension of the scene.

            The stock footage used for the avalanche was quite successful in showing hulking amounts of snow racing down the mountains of Switzerland. However, artistically it falls flat because it doesn't show its relation to the characters. The stock footage doesn't give any emotional cues to the audience because the angle at which the footage is shown is flat which gravely reveals the stock nature of the footage. The edits that Peter Hunt made are excessive and reminds one of the ill-realized attempts at "heightening" action in the Bourne films and other recent action films. The aspect that really destroys any element of reality in the scene, for me at least, was the wonky perspective that is shown behind James Bond and Tracy when they have their medium shots. The background is shaking quite violently even when the characters are just skiing in a relatively straight line. It is obvious then that the backgrounds were added after the actors filmed their skiing scenes in the studio.

C. CONCLUSION- rough

            Obviously filming an avalanche is far more difficult than using an animation program to do it but the overall effect that both films wanted was the same. The avalanche was to be a huge monster of nature that would try but fail to devour the protagonist (Scrat, 007 and Tracy). The avalanche in Ice Age was successful in presenting the danger of the avalanche but failed to make it as believable as it could be even within the universe that it had created. The uniform movements and even pacing of the natural disaster made it seem too artificial. On Her Majesty's Secret Service's quick cuts and stock footage also gave the scene a stale feeling of unfocused direction. All that aside however, both films do allow the avalanches to give the characters a sense of bedlam and if one was to combine the realism in the Bond picture with the heightened danger in Ice Age, the avalanche would work wonders.